Laurie Belgrave
Laurie Belgrave is the founder and director of the beloved South London queer bar and performance collective, The Chateau, where the QFAB founder has spent many a night watching the best queer performers and drag queens/ kings/ artists, before getting sweaty and topless dancing among beautiful fellow queers. (One year into the pandemic, this sounds even more like a perfect dream come true.)
He speaks to QFAB about going from running underage night clubs, to working in big corporate events, to knocking on many many doors for help to create The Chateau. From the good bits like the intangible feeling of a really really good night out in a queer space full of energy. To the hard bits like working out systems and profit margins, and the mental toll it takes working late nights all weekend. Then, like so many people in this industry, finding a healthier rhythm during the pandemic, and considering how to find balance in future. Plus, what’s next for The Chateau as things begin to open up.
Photo Credit - Tim Boddy
Introduce yourself….
My name is Laurie Belgrave. I identify as a Queer man, my pronouns, are he/him. I am the founder and director of The Chateau, which is a queer bar, cultural space and performance collective for South East London, originally, based in Camberwell. And now, due to the current world situation, based a little bit more fluidly online for the time being, but looking forward to a time when we can return IRL into the real world.
What is your job vocation/ job role/ title atm?
I am the founder and director of The Chateau. We've shifted a little bit from being a physical bar, which was our original incarnation into now being online. So my role looks quite different to what it did a year ago although it's the same organisation, the same pillars of what we believe in and what we're trying to achieve. But the way we're carrying that out in the world has changed quite considerably over the last 12 months.
How did you get to where you are? What was your earliest experience in this industry? Did you expect to stay in this industry when you started out?
So hospitality has always actually been quite a central thing for me in terms of my work for a long time. My first job was working in a pub when I was 12 years old, in the village that I grew up in. Yes 12! Imagine that now you go to a pub and as a 12 year old serving your lunch, but also you'd be serving the booze but you're not pouring the booze because that's illegal. They paid me like three pounds an hour. I got drunk for the first time in that pub on New Year's Eve when I was 12. I had two pints of cider and I was absolutely gone!
Running events has always been a big thing for me in bars and clubs. I ran my first events when I was like 15 or 16. They were under age club nights. I was going around London persuading bar, club and venue owners that it was a good idea to let like 400 rampant drunk 14 year olds into their venue, which is like an absolutely terrible idea. We actually got banned from Corsica studios, because these teenagers had a riot!
They pulled the ceiling down with this fabric on the ceiling and a mirror ball fell off the roof and smashed on the floor!
Then I was working in music events and corporate events. So running events has always been really central to me. But when I started The Chateau the alcohol side of it was completely new to me. I mean, except my experience when I was 12, which doesn't really count. I really had to learn quite quickly how to run a bar. I had an amazing mentor in James Dye (co-owner of Camberwell Arms, Frank’s and Mike’s) who I've known since I was a teenager. He helped me in understanding what is involved in working out margins. So having to do all the bar stuff was quite a challenge in the early days. And then I ended up hiring a Bar Manager called Tam, who is amazing.
After three months of running The Chateau I was basically dead and ready to give it all up! Then Tam came in and put in some actual procedures, structure, and some kind of policy around what we were doing, to make it all make a bit more sense and make sure the bar was set up in a certain way, so that we can serve quickly. Tam is all about serving quickly, getting the data, and getting the margins right which was a real eye opener for me to think in that way. And you do see that in your bottom line at the end of the night. If you are efficient, you make more money! In the early days I remember being dressed in drag and sweeping up the street outside on Camberwell High Street as Coco Patron (Laurie’s Drag alter ego) at like five o'clock in the morning, really wasted. It wasn't sustainable, fun to a point but not sustainable. I was drinking a lot around that time when we started, which was a bad idea!
In events and nightlife it's high stress, it's high pressure but there is such a buzz to it, when it really comes together. I've always just loved creating an experience in a unique and interesting space and energy that you can feel when you enter. I think when you entered The Chateau you really felt it! My world is going to continue to be events, but I'm 30 now. I don't necessarily always want to be out until five o'clock in the morning every weekend anymore.
“In events and nightlife it’s high stress, it’s high pressure but there is such a buzz to it, when it really comes together. I’ve always just loved creating an experience in a unique and interesting space and energy that you can feel when you enter. ”
What has been your experience of being queer in this industry?
I'm lucky in terms of what I've done, which is create my own space and our own venue where we could make the rules in terms of the ethos and the environment. Everyone in our team at the Chateau is queer. I've felt very lucky to be surrounded by incredible queer people who inspire me and have also supported me in so many ways.
Previous to The Chateau I did quite a lot of corporate events, working for an agency and mostly on site stuff for big, multi-million pound events in huge venues. Lots of conferences and the like. The onsite atmosphere often had that real macho edge to it. A lot of the people building events are tradesmen. It's all about having beers after work. And you know, I love having beers after work, but not when what’s surrounding it is this macho lad culture. It was kind of segregated with the girls who were in event management or event admin people, and then the guys who were the builders. I got stuck in between because I was doing a lot of the on site building stuff and I'd be in those teams with the guys. But I found that just sort of gendered segregation really weird and difficult. Occasionally there'd be like a gay guy with the girls, and that would kind of be how it would work. I think that there is some work to be done in larger organisations, often around the culture, when you've got a lot of guys working together who just want to be guys, and they don't necessarily realise how language and behaviour can affect people.
As a queer man, I sometimes would feel like I got a bit lost in those environments, and I wasn't able to be myself. I think that can be quite damaging. In workplaces we have to be so careful. It's so important to ensure that we're creating environments for people to be able to be themselves, to flourish as a person and to be able to express their identity openly. Doing that helps everyone, we all benefit from an environment like that.
What are the best and worst things about the industry?
If you're running a night in a bar, and everything's really going to plan - the crowds are amazing, the energy is on point, the DJ is really good, the drinks are flowing, you've got enough staff - something really, really special happens in those spaces. Especially in queer spaces, because of that energy of collective expression that happens when you get a load of queer people in a space dancing together or experiencing culture together. It's like the best feeling in the world. I've had events where I've finished the night and thought that was literally like the best feeling I've ever had in my life, it just something happens. You can't really explain it or describe exactly what it is. It's not really tangible.
In The Chateau we used to feel it a lot because it's a very small space, and the ceilings are very low. If a performer on stage did something amazing and the crowd loved it, you felt it straightaway, it was like a wave that hit you. So those nights, when you get that buzz and that adrenaline when you feel like you've created something really special together as a group! It’s the best feeling in the world!
I think the flip side is the late nights, the loss of social life. Personally, I'd be working Friday night, Saturday night, on Sunday I'd be so tired I wouldn't want to do anything. And that is basically the complete opposite of what a lot of your friends might be doing if they're working in like normal jobs, nine to five or whatever. So I think that was really, really hard. For me, personally I've been so used to going to bed so late and getting up so late and that being a cycle, I just got used to it in my life. But actually going through the pandemic has led to a big realisation about the way that I felt whilst running a nightlife space just in myself. Now, having experienced getting up at a normal time in daylight hours, having a normal workday and finishing at five or six, then having an evening to relax, I found that structure has really, really transformed my mental health. Now I’m thinking about how, in the future, I can find a balance where you get some of that.
“It’s so important to ensure that we’re creating environments for people to be able to be themselves, to flourish as a person and to be able to express their identity openly. Doing that helps everyone, we all benefit from an environment like that.”
What advice would you give to anyone trying to get into your line of work?
I think it would be to reach out to people! Something that I have actually been quite good at, in general, is sending really speculative emails to people you're interested in working with. You can send a lot of them and often you don't get anything back, but every now and then you do! I find that if you reach out to people in a good nature with a good spirit behind what you want to say, people often do get back to you, and you can create amazing connections from absolutely nothing.
If I think about how I started The Chateau, I had no experience of running a bar or running my own space. I was pretty young, I had no money. I basically just chatted to loads of people, sent out a load of emails, got in touch with everyone I knew in the area, and pushed on 1000 doors, and eventually one of them opened and someone offered me a space without having to pay any rent, basically doing a split on the bar. It's amazing what actually does happen and what you can achieve when you start putting energy out into the world.
I think for people who are younger trying to get into the industry, there are people who will look to help you, especially in a queer context. I do it with people who get in touch with me, if I can. Being LGBT and part of this community links you to people. It's almost like we're part of this club together. I think that people are keen on the whole to help out younger queers who are trying to do something and trying to make something happen. So for the younger people, if they don't reach out, if they don't try and get in touch, those connections are never going to happen. And that possibility won't ever come to fruition. Sometimes it can feel hard to put yourself out there, and it's not necessarily easy to write the email or even get the contacts of who these people are that you want to get in touch with. But once you start doing it, it just becomes easier and easier and easier. And then doors start opening… eventually!
What's the best lesson someone else has taught you in your years in the food and drink industry?
Get your accounts straight! That was one of the best lessons. It was from James Dye,
he’s a finance guy. He's an amazing visionary in terms of creating spaces, bars, restaurants and experiences. He always really has the money side, he's really on it, and I respected and admired that because I was kind of at the other end of the spectrum where I'm like, ‘let's just create something amazing and the rest of it will work itself out!’
With The Chateau in the early days, the finance side of the business was quite shaky, in terms of the accounting and the like. I didn't really know how to run a business. The best piece of advice I would say is make sure you're on it with your accounts from the beginning, make sure it's all legit, because you'll just save yourself a headache and time down the line.
“If you’re running a night in a bar, and everything’s really going to plan...something really, really special happens in those spaces. Especially in queer spaces, because of that energy of collective expression that happens when you get a load of queer people in a space dancing together or experiencing culture together. It’s like the best feeling in the world. ”
What's the best meal you've ever had? What was it? Where was it? Who was it with?
The best meal that cropped up first in my mind was on a Greek island when I was 18. I was on holiday with a mate's family, and we went to this little restaurant up on the top of a hill in the town, and I had a Greek stew called Stiffado. It was quite simple really with beef and tomatoes but like slow cooked for a long time. Sometimes you have these meals that, when you think back to, you can taste it. You know, it's so evocative your taste buds go back to that moment. And Stiffado is one of those ones that when I was 18, which is quite some time ago now, I can just remember it so clearly. Basically for the next 10 years everywhere I went I would try and find Stiffado. They would have it very occasionally and when they did have it, it didn't ever taste the way that it tasted on that Greek island on that day. So it's like for the last 12 years of my life, I've been searching for that Stiffado! (laughing)
What is your guilty food pleasure?
I love Boursin cheese on a cracker thickly spread!
What are your top places to eat or drink?
The Hermits Cave (Camberwell) -I love a pub, really love a pub. And I think because I was working in a nightlife, late night environment, if I was going to go for a drink, I kind of wanted it to be like, deathly quiet, like, no noise, really cosy open fire, like an plush old living room and lots of old dudes at the bar. So there's a few pubs like that. The Hermit's Cave is good for that.
Chesham Arms - If you're in East London, my favourite pub is the Chesham Arm's in Homerton, which is just so nice. They have a link with Yard Sale pizza, it’s really good. Really cosy, good beer selection and good atmosphere.
Taco Queen on Rye Lane, Peckham - I just love it.
Silk Road, Chateau’s neighbour and everyone’s favourite Camberwell restaurant, serving Xinjiang style Chinese food.
And an honorary mention to KFC on camberwell Church Street, which at 3am absolutely saved my life so many times.
Favourite banger to play when you're working?
I've chosen this one because it was actually one of the cleanup songs at The Chateau: Let’s talk About Gender Baby by Planningtorock. Planningtorock is an amazing artist and at The Chateau we work with a lot of trans and non binary artists, and quite a few of our team are as well. Planningtorock is a big part of that community culturally and so is that song. When you put that on in a queer club there's a special energy, something special happens because it really speaks to so so many people in our community.
“Being LGBT and part of this community links you to people. It’s almost like we’re part of this club together. I think that people are keen on the whole to help out younger queers who are trying to do something and trying to make something happen. ”
What advice would you give to your younger baby queer self?
Don't be so hard on yourself! I think that when you're creating experiences for people, there is a tendency to move towards perfectionism. If I'm doing an event I want it to be perfect, because I want people to come and have a great time. I want people to come and express themselves and feel comfortable, free and have fun. I think that I, personally in my career, put a lot of pressure on myself to ensure that everyone's having the best time all the time. And if it didn't happen, I'd be really upset or if something went wrong or I felt that the energy wasn't right it would really affect me quite deeply. I think that, with hindsight and looking at things in context, afterwards you say actually you're doing a really good job, but at the time I think I was very much focused on the things that maybe didn't go right.
We need to enjoy these moments as well. We work in this industry, because we love it (usually). So we have to enjoy it. So often when actually things are going really well, you're focusing on the tiny little things that maybe aren’t going quite right. And that's not really the right way of looking at it. That goes through my work and also my personal life as well.
Do you feel it is important for the LGBTQ+ community within the food and beverage industry to have a network? And if so why?
I was really excited when you got in touch and said that you were doing this, because I think that coming out of the pandemic these networks and connections are going to be really crucial in helping us all to transition from what, essentially, has been a collective trauma back into a world of work. Because hospitality has really been very closely ingrained with this idea of COVID. Like spreading in hospitality and all this kind of stuff, people have been furloughed and lost their jobs, and all our venues and restaurants and bars have been closed. It's been so traumatic for people in our industry, as well as people across various industries. Hospitality has been really hit very, very hard.
But I also think as queer people specifically, we have some kind of unique and different issues that often we need support with. Creating and making these links more tangible between our peers between generations, I think that's gonna be really, really important for people coming out of this period. And also acknowledging our diverse needs and identities within the community as well.
The LGBTQI+ community is very diverse; within it you've got a whole spectrum of people in terms of ethnicity and race, gender expression and sexuality. This network could also help those people to find people similar to them, maybe like queer people of colour who are in this industry, or trans or non binary people who are in this industry, and create structures for support between those groups, within the overall umbrella of what you're doing. I think it's really important, you can create opportunities through these kinds of networks and groups. It's really, really exciting that you're doing it and thank you for doing it!
“coming out of the pandemic these networks and connections are going to be really crucial in helping us all to transition from what, essentially, has been a collective trauma back into a world of work. Because hospitality has really been very closely ingrained with this idea of COVID. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”
What are your top queer (food and beverage related) accounts you follow?
Butch Salads (@butchsalads) absolutely loving the content at the moment. It's really stepped up recently. The recipes you've been posting, I've been like I really want to make that! Which I don't say very often. So yeah, I've been really genuinely loving it and I'm not just saying that.
The Queer Brewing Project (@queerbrewingproject) is something that I really like. They did a collaboration beer with Brick Brewery in Peckham that we used to stock at The Chateau and a portion of the proceeds are going to charity. They have just relaunched with a whole new range, I think their first non collaboration range. I'm always trying to find the queers who are doing beer stuff.
What is next for you?
Rebuilding the organisation post pandemic and shaping what it's going to look like. It's going to be quite different to how it was, for now at least. We're not going to be operating within a permanent space. Overall, it's going to be a bit more culture focused, but there will be nightlife bits we're going to be doing. But it's fluid and it's changing as we exit the pandemic, I don't quite know exactly how it's going to land.
Is there anything you would like to share with our community?
Yes! It’s a podcast from an ex staff member at The Chateau called Nic, who used to do the door! An incredible, queer person who is a huge part of the Chateau story. Nic has done a podcast recently called Fluid, it's been supported by the Roundhouse. One of the real pleasures in my life now is seeing what people who were involved in the Chateau are doing and also the connections that people made within that space, and how those are continuing to breathe more life into our community, even though the space itself is not open. So I would encourage everyone who's reading this interview to listen to that podcast. It's really interesting, it covers loads of areas, queer history, queer spaces, what it means. And Nic is an absolute angel!
